What foods you eat affect many functions of the body, as the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients you get from food help to fuel your body. What you eat affects not only your physical health but also your mental health. Diet not only affects your mood, but it can also impact your level of happiness and concentration. It’s essential to eat a diet that includes a large variety of vegetables, fruits, and good-quality meat or protein sources.
Diet and Your Mood
While you may have heard of superfoods, the reality is that it’s more important to consume a varied, healthy diet full of many different fruits and vegetables. When you eat a healthy, varied diet, your concentration, mood, and memory can be boosted and may even protect you from mental issues like depression. When you eat too many processed, sugary foods or drinks, this has been linked to an increase in developing anxiety or depression. Your body needs nutrients to function correctly.
A Balanced Diet
What does a balanced diet look like? This will vary from person to person, but overall, the thought is the same: eat a lot and a wide variety of vegetables and fruits and consume good quality protein sources. These food groups that are important to incorporate into your diet:
- Fish
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Legumes
- Vegetables
- Whole grains
- Fruits
- Unsaturated fats
It’s important to limit processed foods, sugar, and high-fat foods with little to no nutritional value. Processed and sugary foods have been linked to hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, poor concentration, and anxiety and depression.
Mental Health and Gut Health
When you eat a healthy and varied diet, your gut bacteria are fed with fiber, prebiotics, and probiotics. This can help lower inflammation, and when inflammation is lower in the body, people feel better overall. Chronic inflammation can lead to chronic illness, diseases, and other health problems. Some of the contributors to inflammation include the following:
- Lack of exercise
- Smoking
- Insomnia
- Stress
- Improper diet
When you consume processed foods or sugar, this can feed the “bad” bacteria in your gut, causing inflammation and mental health problems. This is one of the reasons it’s important to limit the amount of processed and sugary foods you consume.
A Healthy Diet Boosts a Healthy Mood
When you eat a healthy, varied diet that avoids most processed foods, you can help improve your mental health. It’s crucial to avoid energy and sugary drinks, as many of these contain caffeine, which can stimulate the body. It’s important also to note that how you eat can impact your mood as well, and when you take time to be mindful while you eat, it can have a positive impact on the body.
Let Us Help You
At True You Health and Wellness, we enjoy helping clients decide what diet is best for them. If you’re confused about what you’re eating is best for you, work with us to discover what exactly will be the best fuel for your body. It can be confusing to know what’s best to eat, so let us take the guesswork out of it for you! We enjoy serving our neighbors in Fredericksburg, VA. Call today.
